1001 Creative Ways of Using Spells

[Black_Zawisza]

1. Toss a small animal from a high place. Cast Baleful Transposition on an enemy. Hear the lamentation of their women.

2. Use Shrink Item on a sizable object. Throw it at an enemy before unshrinking the item.

3. Get a big stack of paper and cast Explosive Runes on at least one page. Ask a friend to throw it at an enemy and ready an action to cast Dispel Magic on it as soon as they do so. Intentionally fail your caster level check, which causes the runes to activate.

(These aren't just for combat either, I was just unable to think of out-of-combat ones. Fire away!)

[Jon_Dahl]

4. Using Major Image to create Spectres or Greater Shadows is always a bummer.

[motoko's ghost]

2. Use Shrink Item on a sizable object. Throw it at an enemy before unshrinking the item.


5.use shrink item to disguise your poisoned dagger as an earring, sneaking it past guards.

[NNescio]

1. Toss a small animal from a high place. Cast Baleful Transposition on an enemy. Hear the lamentation of their women.


... A solid object such as the ground, a bridge, or a rope must connect the creatures.

Yeah, WotC saw that coming.

I had a player who tried to pull something similar on me.

[Black_Zawisza]

Yeah, WotC saw that coming.

I had a player who tried to pull something similar on me.
Nice catch! Here's an alternative...

6. Cast Baleful Transposition on a mounted combatant and his mount.

[Hirax]

Undermaster (Spell Compendium) reduces the casting time of move earth to a standard action, no matter how much earth you move. Got a flying enemy? With the ability to move over 5 million cubic feet of earth as a standard action, bring the ground to them!

[ahenobarbi]

7. Come to the edge of the cliff, tie animal to a thin branch, put it so animal hangs over the cliff. Cast baleyful transposition.

8. Put a lot of alchemist fire in a bag, shrink item it, have your invisible servant drop it on some one.

[NNescio]

Nice catch! Here's an alternative...

6. Cast Baleful Transposition on a mounted combatant and his mount.

Heh, the party fighter had that trick pulled on him after he managed to get dominated by the enemy. Good times.

On a related note:

10. Using Dominate Person as a buff for communication purposes and to make it harder for hostile Dominates to work. Also has a use for reinforcing certain Bluff checks (DC 15 Sense Motive: Look, he's totally not acting under his own will, so he can't be responsible!), and is the Enchanter's last resort as a cure for alcoholism.

--

11. Classic trick: Summon Monster I: Celestial Monkey -> Literal Trap Monkey.

[motoko's ghost]

12. spread out your casting create water as thin as possible to cover the greatest possible area,do it above head height to create a short artificial rainfall, spot which squares the invisible thing is in.

[Krazzman]

13. User purify food or water to win a drinking contest. (easiest done with vodka or korn, then do an orison before each drink [especially effective in Pathfinder, replaced in eberron through the Party-Domain])

[Eloel]

10. Using Dominate Person as a buff for communication purposes and to make it harder for hostile Dominates to work. Also has a use for reinforcing certain Bluff checks (DC 15 Sense Motive: Look, he's totally not acting under his own will, so he can't be responsible!), and is the Enchanter's last resort as a cure for alcoholism.

This could actually work with Frenzied Berserkers. Hmm..

[GnomeGninjas]

14
If your DM likes to have portals to hell that the evil cultist are using to destroy the world, cast stone/wood/etc. shape on the outside of the portal so the devils won't fit out. Hopefully the DM would allow that to close the portal and not just say you can't.

[motoko's ghost]

15. silent image...need I say more:smalltongue:

[Elboxo]

16. Shrink a boulder, put it in your enemy's drink.

17. Cast Illusory Script on a roll of parchment with the command "Do the chicken dance, forget me." on it. Use it to get to restricted areas by showing it to guards, Dr Who style. ( One I was using up until recently in my campaign, minus the chicken dance bit. )

18. Lock an enemy away in a secure vault, restrained, now cast Lesser Geas with the command "Escape", 4 days later: -8 to every ability score.

19. "A sleeping guard is always willing" Benign Transposition on sleeping targets and your familiar ( Anything flying ) out the window/off a cliff. Any 'willing target' spell ( Such as Reduce Person ) works well, nothing like waking up half your height.

20. Invisible spell: Spectral hand + Chill Touch shenanigans. Best cast outside a tavern, then upon entering, start 'Touching' people anonymously.

21. Shatter.(Single solid object version.) Doors, crowns, belt buckles, spell-component pouch straps, spell books, holy symbols, swords/armour, wheels, statues, chairs, the possibilities are endless.

P.S. I love these threads

[Polarity Shift]

Deeper Darkness at night so you really can't be seen instead of just that Shadowy Illumination stuff.

Dimension Door as a means of air dropping chargers. You can't act, but they suffer no such restriction.

[Slipperychicken]

24. Quicken Dispel Magic + Shatter. Render the ubersword temporarily nonmagical, then break it.

[Rapidghoul]

25. Send your Hummingbird familiar / Summon Elemental slave above / immediately behind a group of unsuspecting enemies. Use benign transposition to replace it with your biggest fighter.

26. Persistent Spell: Melf's Acid Arrow. Killing them slowly, dealing an average of 72000 points of damage.

27. Dancing Lights (using the humanoid form) + Ghost Noise out ahead to spook less intelligent creatures and give away their positions. Alternatively, use these to distract to set up an ambush.

[Randomguy]

28. Shatter someone's pants so they lose the bonus from their magic belt. How many people have magic pants?

29. Dancing lights used as signal lights.

30. Polymorph any object on some fog to turn it into an acid fog.

31. Inscribing any magic symbol on an allies tower shield.

32. Plane shifting a dying ally into the heroic domains of Ysgard when the party healer's out of spells.

EDIT: ninja'd.

[Karoht]

33-Symbol of [blank] Abuse
Step 1. Cast Symbol of [blank] On a rock.
Step 2. Cast Levitate to carefully sneak the rock into an enemy camp. Use a flat rock and keep the symbol side down.
Step 3. Once you have enough of these in position, trigger.
Step 4. Profit!

33a-Bouncyball of [blank]
Cast Symbol of [blank] on a Bouncyball. Enjoy.

33b-Bucket of [blank]
Prepare many many Bouncyballs of [blank]. Use Levitate or a flyer to carpet bomb the enemy. Symbol of Death in the event of a living army (and an evil character), Symbol of Healing in the event of an undead army.

[Gullintanni]

34. Reach + Chained Glyphs of Warding on ammunition. Have fun :smallamused:

[Slipperychicken]

35. Shrink item a 5'radius lead cone. Use the "clothlike material" option. Wear it as a hat. When you fall into an AMF, your "hat" will turn into a giant lead cone, blocking the AMF so you can teleport out.

[CTrees]

36. Animate dead, then inscribe your new, expendable minions with pretty much any of the symbols. Then have them go wander towards your enemies, with orders to hug.

[JohnDaBarr]

This is called the Boom Box.

Cast Explosive rune's on multiple small pieces of papers (the more the better XD) , then get a wooden box, hire or ask a cleric to cast Glyph of Warding with a Dispel ward set to go of if the desired conditions are met (if the box touches any being expect yourself etc....), put the papers in the box and hit someone with it XD
(if you had 20 Exp Runes and one got dispeld others will go of and that is 19x6x6d dmg)

helpful spells with this are True Strike, Launch Item etc...

[TSED]

36. Animate dead, then inscribe your new, expendable minions with pretty much any of the symbols. Then have them go wander towards your enemies, with orders to hug.

36b: Skeleton minion, cast Skull Trap on their skull. They shouldn't need their skull in order to be functional (as undead have no weak points etc.), and you now have suicide bombers that don't suicide.

[Ryu_Bonkosi]

5.use shrink item to disguise your poisoned dagger as an earring, sneaking it past guards.

Did this on a character once, but I used the enchantment that lets you change its size whenever you wanted. Good Times.

38. Casting Ghost Sound to make it sound like there are heavy footsteps behind a door with voices saying "You can have the small one this time, I broke the last one too fast." to distract who ever is in the same room with me.

[SleepyShadow]

39 - Animate Object on the enemy's pants.

40 - Cast Enlarge Person on the gnome. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1zedP-68GQ)

[Ryu_Bonkosi]

36b: Skeleton minion, cast Skull Trap on their skull. They shouldn't need their skull in order to be functional (as undead have no weak points etc.), and you now have suicide bombers that don't suicide.

What book is that spell in?

[Ifni]

41. Teleport+Featherfall is a decent Core alternative to Mass Fly (or as a panic-button when you do have Mass Fly, but just need to get everyone off the ground now). Teleport a few hundred feet into the air, cast Featherfall as a swift action so the party falls 60ft/round: you now have several rounds to buff / cast proper flight spells / rain fiery death on the fools below.

42. The Message cantrip is SR:no, save:no and lasts 10 minutes/level. Of course its main use is for party communication, but you can also use it to make NPCs think they're insane (the voices! the terrible, whispering voices!)

There are also some edge cases where being able to anonymously inflict an irresistible and fairly long-lasting transmutation aura on somebody else is really useful, for the cost of a L0 spell. When the guards are searching for shapeshifters, for example. Or when the GM has set up a tournament with a "no buff spells allowed" rule, on pain of disqualification (you can make a lot of money taking people's bets, if the favorites just happen to get disqualified for cheating by the Detect-Magic scanner... best done when you're not planning to stay in town afterwards, though).

43. Disintegrate = Greater Open = Make Hole. (This may or may not count as creative, but some people seem to see Disintegrate as a damage spell for some reason...) Never worry about trapped doors or inconveniently placed walls or dimensionally-locked forcecages again! (I've seen two sorcerers drill through 50ft of rock in under 20 seconds in an actual game, in order to nuke a nasty underground-dungeon encounter from above.)

[Elboxo]

44. Casting Magic Mouth on yourself with the speech "TUMBLE!" to be activated the next time someone aims a weapon at you.

45. Sneaking into an enemy encampment and casting Magic Mouth on the pillows and chairs to shout obscenities when they are next sat on/lay on. Also works on you if you want to stop night-time attackers.

46. Bestow Curse. 50% chance to fail next action, pretty bad right? Check the duration: Permanent. You could also homebrew one ( As per the spell ) so that the target can never again evacuate his bowels. Worst death ever.

47. Offensive casting of Wall of Ice, between you and enemies or on stairs, great for large area debuff against multiple weak enemies: "Even when the ice has been broken through, a sheet of frigid air remains. Any creature stepping through it (including the one who broke through the wall) takes 1d6 points of cold damage +1 point per caster level (no save)." + Forces the enemies to make balance checks, only DC 5, but over that large area, some are going to fail, and under balance rules: "You are considered flat-footed while balancing, since you can’t move to avoid a blow, and thus you lose your Dexterity bonus to AC." not to mention "If you take damage while balancing, you must make another Balance check against the same DC to remain standing."

So they trip over and are flat-footed, and have to make balance checks while being under attack ( Longbows are great ) so they don't fall again, should they destroy the ice they take a minimum 1d6 + 7 for every round they stay in it. against a large army of level 3-5 fighters at the front line, that is going to cause some serious slapstick comedy.

[NNescio]

43. Disintegrate = Greater Open = Make Hole. (This may or may not count as creative, but some people seem to see Disintegrate as a damage spell for some reason...) Never worry about trapped doors or inconveniently placed walls or dimensionally-locked forcecages again! (I've seen two sorcerers drill through 50ft of rock in under 20 seconds in an actual game, in order to nuke a nasty underground-dungeon encounter from above.)

Just be careful of trees and livewood.

[flabort]

48. Craft a sword or something entirely too large for the party fighter (or barbarian) to wield, cast shrink item. When
A) The meatsheild pisses you off
B) He's gone into a frenzy and is in danger of killing allies
C) the sword is stuck into an enemy
remove the enchantment. For A and B, he'll be unable to carry the weapon, and drop it, making him much less dangerous. With C, the weapon will be rapidly expanding inside an enemy. Rapidly displacing internal organs. More likely than not, entirely bisecting them.

[jaybird]

49. CL-based Size cap on Dimension Door got you down? Reduce Person solves all your problems.

[Templarkommando]

48. Craft a sword or something entirely too large for the party fighter (or barbarian) to wield, cast shrink item. When
A) The meatsheild pisses you off
B) He's gone into a frenzy and is in danger of killing allies
C) the sword is stuck into an enemy
remove the enchantment. For A and B, he'll be unable to carry the weapon, and drop it, making him much less dangerous. With C, the weapon will be rapidly expanding inside an enemy. Rapidly displacing internal organs. More likely than not, entirely bisecting them.

Not a bad move, be careful of the context of it though. My fighter has quickdraw and tends to carry at least two backup weapons.

[Demons_eye]

48. Craft a sword or something entirely too large for the party fighter (or barbarian) to wield, cast shrink item. When
A) The meatsheild pisses you off
B) He's gone into a frenzy and is in danger of killing allies
C) the sword is stuck into an enemy
remove the enchantment. For A and B, he'll be unable to carry the weapon, and drop it, making him much less dangerous. With C, the weapon will be rapidly expanding inside an enemy. Rapidly displacing internal organs. More likely than not, entirely bisecting them.

Don't you want a magical weapon by 6th level?

50. Wood Shaping entire forest into Ent's to scare off people.

[Elboxo]

51. Explosive runes + Animal messenger, message the bandit camp once about propisng a truce, then send some of these. Bonus points if the messenger dies too, thus 0 evidence.

52. Stone Shape + Silent Image. The 2-round pitfall trap, alternatively stoneshape + a rug.

53. Stone Shape + A ceiling or cliff. Watch your enemies get crushed by 15 cubic feat of stone. Does depend on the weight somewhat, 1d6 per 200 pounds, but WoTC tells us: "Example: A magic flying ship tilts to one side and drops a 400-pound stone statue (a petrified comrade) overboard. The statue deals 2d6 points of damage to anything it strikes by virtue of its weight alone."

A petrified comrade would be about two 5ft cubes ( One on top of the other, with space to spare.), so we can assume that 5 cubic feet of stone weighs 200 pounds ( 2d6 damage from weight, per DMG ) so 15 cubic feat = 15x200, or three thousand pounds. Easily the maximum 20d6, it gains additional damage for every 10ft past the first 10ft that it falls. So off a cliff, say 30ft high? 22d6 damage.

Alternatively offensive casting of Stone Shape allows you to create pits right underneath your enemies..... No save, no SR, the spell comes into effect after the casting time, so suddenly a pit appears underneath them, duration: instantaneous, no slow rock fall for the enemies to jump from.

[NNescio]

53. Stone Shape + A ceiling or cliff. Watch your enemies get crushed by 15 cubic feat of stone. Does depend on the weight somewhat, 1d6 per 200 pounds, but WoTC tells us: "Example: A magic flying ship tilts to one side and drops a 400-pound stone statue (a petrified comrade) overboard. The statue deals 2d6 points of damage to anything it strikes by virtue of its weight alone."

A petrified comrade would be about two 5ft cubes ( One on top of the other, with space to spare.), so we can assume that 5 cubic feet of stone weighs 200 pounds ( 2d6 damage from weight, per DMG ) so 15 cubic feat = 15x200, or three thousand pounds. Easily the maximum 20d6, it gains additional damage for every 10ft past the first 10ft that it falls. So off a cliff, say 30ft high? 22d6 damage.

Alternatively offensive casting of Stone Shape allows you to create pits right underneath your enemies..... No save, no SR, the spell comes into effect after the casting time, so suddenly a pit appears underneath them, duration: instantaneous, no slow rock fall for the enemies to jump from.

Range: Touch

Also, basic math: A 5-foot cube has a volume of 125 cubic feet, putting it out of the reach of the Stone Shape spell, barring extreme caster level abuse.

So, no pits.

[Chronos]

54: Another one for Magic Mouth. Cast a whole bunch of them on you and your allies during downtime, with ridiculous trigger conditions that'll never actually occur. That way, if you get hit by an area dispel, it'll probably just take down a mouth, not one of your real buffs. It's like ablative armor for spells.

55: Cast Silence on a burr (you know, those velcro seed thingies). Have the party rogue sneak up behind an enemy spellcaster and stick it to his robes. Watch him try to figure out how to get out of the area.

[Elboxo]

Range: Touch

Also, basic math: A 5-foot cube has a volume of 125 cubic feet, putting it out of the reach of the Stone Shape spell, barring extreme caster level abuse.

So, no pits.

Ah not cubes hurrrrr, thanks for the correction.

[Venger]

This is called the Boom Box.

Cast Explosive rune's on multiple small pieces of papers (the more the better XD) , then get a wooden box, hire or ask a cleric to cast Glyph of Warding with a Dispel ward set to go of if the desired conditions are met (if the box touches any being expect yourself etc....), put the papers in the box and hit someone whit it XD
(if you had 20 Exp Runes and one got dispeld others will go of and that is 19x6x6d dmg)

helpful spells with this are True Strike, Launch Item etc...

A boombox can change the world, you've gotta know your limits with a boombox. this was a cautionary tale.

A BOOMBOX IS NOT A TOY!